What can you get for $70 a month?

[KirbysLawn]

Today while at my child's pediatrician (who I am friends with) we spoke about lawn services. He asked me what would I charge for the following:

* Weekly mowing (app.. 34 a year on a lawn on a steep hill)
* Weekly trimming edging, and blowing (a lot of edging)
* 5 step fertilizing program
* Aeration, seeding, and fertilizing in the fall and spring.....humm......
* Leaf pick-up and removal
* Pre-emergent control
* Shrub trimming

He is currnetly paying $70 a month for all of the above, boy, what a deal!! He said the guy already aerated and seeded the lawn but did not apply starter fertilizer, he questioned and the guy said he didn't want to "overload" the saw with stuff. :confused: After 2 weeks the seeds were not germinating or growing at all and the guy finally fertilized the lawn.

Obviously I warned him that this guy has the potential to kill his lawn, anyone that applies pre-m then seeds has no clue as to what he is doing. Just found this funny and shows what some of us compete with.:angry:

[65hoss]

What a deal. You could lowball him and get tons of work for a whopping price of $65 monthly. Let me know if you don't want it, maybe I can drive from Memphis to cut it once a week.

I think you should go measure everything off and come up with a good price. Sounds like he's not happy with the $70 job. Sell from a quality and knowledge standpoint.

[Lawn-Scapes]

That sounds like a heck of a deal...

Are you saying he recently put down pre-m and just seeded? Do you usually put down pre-m at this time of the year in your neck of the woods?

What do you mean overload the saw?

[ChadsLawn]

dang My cheapest accounts(1/4 acre) are $85 a month..Thats just the basic mowing with trimming a few hedges included..

[smburgess]

His present "man with mower" is like a duck out of water once the the grass has been cut.
Fertilizer would have nothing to do with whether the seed germinated or not, by the way.

[MuskTurfKing]

I have one account that is $80 a month...it's just mowing, edging and all that good stuff...All others are at least $100 a month.

[lawnboy82]

Unless this guy put down some tupersan that is the problem right there.

[gogetter]

What!?!?! I have little tiny trailer park lawns that I get $80 per month for just mowing/trimming/blowing at $20 each week, 4x's a month.

Any chance the doctor is yanking ya? But you did say he was a friend, so I would think that's not likely.

Sounds impossible.

[Green Care]

Who,s telling the truth. HEY tell 'DOC' to show some paper work.Man that,s a good deal.

[Evan528]

This is a little of topic...... Tuperson seems to work as good as no pre- emergent at all. I have used it on new lawns and have seen it used. crabbgrass always invades the area any way. Its qquite expensive to be quite so ineffective.

[KirbysLawn]

Originally posted by Lawnzzz
Who,s telling the truth. HEY tell 'DOC' to show some paper work.Man that,s a good deal.

LMAO!! I hope you don't actually think this guy has a written contract! No, he's not kidding, I got beat out of a bid a while back and the guy bid very simular.

Sorta related, my wife's aunt called tonight and said her neighbor (who owns a lawn service) was aerating his lawn and offered to do her lawn for $60, not too bad considering her lawn is 18,000 sf! I told her let him do it and I would drop off the seed. Great, now family has started using these guys......$3.00 per 1000....I love it...:angry:

[Flex-Deck]

I am not in the mowing business as a job, but have to relate an experience. A guy that was a lot older that I talked to about woodworking died and his widows son asked if i would mow the yard and it is 2 acres. out of respect i said $30 per mow and it takes 40 min. and it is amazing that the complains are the same "You didn't mow it short enough, etc" This is at least a $70 dollar yard.

[Turfcouncil]

sounds like a great job for a mow and go.
Everything else should add about 100 a month more.
Seriously that is a LOWBALL
80 per month 5k lawn mow edge and blow

[Loosestrife]

Originally posted by KirbysLawn



Sorta related, my wife's aunt called tonight and said her neighbor (who owns a lawn service) was aerating his lawn and offered to do her lawn for $60, not too bad considering her lawn is 18,000 sf! I told her let him do it and I would drop off the seed. Great, now family has started using these guys......$3.00 per 1000....I love it...:angry:


So a business owner did his neighbor a favor. I do it all the time. My neighbors help me out, and I help them out. Often, I will do things gratis, or at cost.

[the point man]

You need either to sell your service to the doc at a higher price
or advise him to be very, very nice to the guy whose doing it
already, because the doc's getting a hell of a deal!

[KDJ]

Well I think he's yanking your chain, dont fall for it.
But if he was my childs doctor I would stick to my
price and find out if he likes to bartter from time to
time. Every thing said and done you could come out
ahead in the long run.

[Kent Lawns]

WHO CARES?

You can ALWAYS find someone who mows for $10. Who plows for cheap or who charges $15/man hour for services.

Let them stifle themselves and just run YOUR program.

Don't waste your time evaluating who's cheaper or HOW they do it. You're not Wal-Mart, you don't have the resources to evauate or analyze your competition or compare prices.

Devout your man-hours to sales, relationships and customer service and you won't have to worry about competition.

Forget about the losers, you always learn more from a winner.

[cos]

I would have said that the Doc is lying too. But, if you don't put it past him, you are right for not trying to jump on that band wagon.

[lawrence stone]

He sure seams to be giving away his services.

But let us think out of the box for a minute. If the customer only has a $70 or $840 dollar budget to work with lets crunch some numbers.

Ray you did not give us a sq. footage of the property so I will say it's 10k.

Now in my climate and with my superior mowers I can limit the mowing maintenance visits to 18. Plus I will throw in two apps of 5-10-31 with spot weed control.

So if we take the $840 gross and divide by 18 performances we have a per visit gross of $46.66.

If I could find a hundred accounts of this nature I would take everyone I could get my meat hooks into.

[KirbysLawn]

Doc was not asking me to mow or hinting what he wanted me to do it for, he lives way out of my area, he was just asking me my opinion on what he was getting for the $$.

Stone, the lawn is about 8k in size and is on a steep incline full of beds tha require trimming. The lawn would require weekly mowing no matter what mowers you use.

[SprinklerGuy]

Do you guys normally seed this time of year? Is it overseeding of rye grass like we do here out west in the fall? Just curious. Also, could the doctor have meant 70 per week?

[Twotoros]

Man that is low even in my cheap a$$ town. I would not even do the mowing only for those prices even if it was a cash on the spot deal! How can he do it?

[HBFOXJr]

You know, makes cocktails at 7 seem like a good way to start the day.

[Southern Lawns]

Do you guys normally seed this time of year? Is it overseeding of rye grass like we do here out west in the fall? Just curious.

Yes!

[fireball]

you should have looked him right in the eye and said that you have another doctor who will look at your five kids, give em shots, put braces on their teeth, and haircuts for each for seventy bucks too

[lsylvain]

A good way to get to no even have this delema is to deside how much money you want just for unloading your mower at a customers place. I desided this year I wan't going to unload my mower for less than $30. Of coarse that is high but, I don't like the smaller jobs. They seem like more work than the big ones to me.

When you set a standered like that and stick to it you don't spend all of your time pondering insignifican't jobs.

The only time I go under my $30 min is when there is some other benifit that I feel makes it worth while. For instance I do the manager of the radio advertizing group for $20 a cut in the hopes that she can hook me up on advertizing.